Pronunciation help
ca, kivuye
Ubutumwa 17
ururimi: English
jchthys (Kwerekana umwidondoro) 15 Ntwarante 2009 21:50:24
As someone else said, ĥ is rare. It's a guttural sound that (frankly speaking) I never had a problem with.
As a side note, I think that the letter looks ugly with the circumflex so high, but that's my opinion.
Frankouche (Kwerekana umwidondoro) 16 Ntwarante 2009 12:26:36
jchthys:If you can't pronounce the trilled R, I think the French uvular R is a decent substituteThanks. Everybody needs sometimes a french
I prove it immediately : we soon spoke about "Rolling Rrrrrrrr in this forum.
ceigered (Kwerekana umwidondoro) 16 Ntwarante 2009 14:18:26
erinja:It sounds very nice to say that any kind of R is ok, but in fact Zamenhof suggested Italian as a good model for good R pronunciation.And from that day forwards, English, mandarin, Japanese, Danish, German, French, Toki Pona and all other non-rolling 'r' speakers have had many troubles whenever an 'R' appeared in an Esperanto text
.I have to say, I think the biggest problems with all other 'R's other than the Italian R would have to be the fact that they are hard to pick up after many vowels, where as rolled 'r's are less troublesome in that respect. Also, when you say 'tr'/'dr' with an English R, it becomes almost a 'ch' and 'j' sound respectively (just to back up Erinja's statement about running a risk of being not understood).
I have to admit though, I have been experimenting with the use of an English 'R' in Esperanto and trying to find ways of pronouncing it clearly without either destroying my t's and d's or sounding like a pirate (e.g. dolchamarrrr
).(BTW, in regards to Toki Pona, there are no 'r's, so of course for a natural toki pona speaker, the rolling 'r' would be hardest
) 
Rogir (Kwerekana umwidondoro) 16 Ntwarante 2009 14:36:41
ceigered (Kwerekana umwidondoro) 16 Ntwarante 2009 14:48:41
Rogir:Natural toki pona speaker? What the hell are you talking about?Well, they obviously don't exist... yet, but it would be quite disadvantageous to be one as the amount of sounds in the language are so few that pronouncing most other languages would be quite a difficult task.
(Sorry Rogir, I might be using the wrong terminology - is a 'natural speaker' someone who speaks the language as their first one? I'm too tired to think properly)
Rogir (Kwerekana umwidondoro) 16 Ntwarante 2009 22:53:06
ceigered (Kwerekana umwidondoro) 17 Ntwarante 2009 08:57:57
Rogir:Well, the proper terminology is native speaker, but I knew what you meant. But it seems not very likely that one can have 120 words as a natural first language.Native speaker, that's the one, dankon!
Well, you could have, but either the native speakers would be quite simple minded or the language would grow/adapt numerous neologisms like the Germanic languages did with Latin + greek to accommodate complicated communication better, which would then probably grow into another language.